


In Person

by Kit, PeroxidePirate



Series: KelxAlanna [2]
Category: Tortall - Pierce
Genre: F/F, Round Robin
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-04-05
Updated: 2010-04-05
Packaged: 2017-10-08 18:01:03
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 9
Words: 1,202
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/78091
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kit/pseuds/Kit, https://archiveofourown.org/users/PeroxidePirate/pseuds/PeroxidePirate
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Picks up at the end of "Letters Sent." After trading a series of letters, Kel and Alanna are finally together. This one is also co-written with the wonderful Kitty Ryan, for the Goldenlake Smackdown.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Kel reacts to the unexpected. (Chapter by me.)

“A letter?” Kel asked, puzzled. The mail wasn't due for a week or more, and that if there was – relative – peace.

Then she saw the seal on the parchment.

She turned it over in her hands, apprehension and excitement warring inside her. Nothing to do but open it, of course. Then she would know.

Eight words. She read them several times, heart thumping. Alanna, _here?_ She'd meant to issue an invitation, yes, but then she would have had time to prepare. Her tent was a mess – worn clothing and gear in need of mending, scattered from one end of it to the other. _She_ was a mess. She'd barely slept in days, her hair was unwashed. Where was her comb? Her spare pillow? The one shirt she'd kept apart, so it didn't smell of horse and used cooking oil? Where...?

She stopped. There was Alanna, in the doorway of her tent. In person.

“Lioness,” she managed, voice cracking on the single word.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Alanna is flustered. (Chapter by Kit.)

  
One word, cracked and strained and eyes wide on her face. Kel stood at the centre of a very small, personal whirlwind.

“Oh, dear,” she said ruefully. “There’s attractively uncivilised and _then_ there’s sending you into a fit about things. It’s all right. You don’t have to—“

Don’t have to do what? Prepare a bedspace for her? She blushed, awkward and expected, feeling the heat seep down her neck and up around the backs of her ears.

Kel opened her mouth to agree—to protest. Who knew? Alanna crossed the space between them and took her hands, threading her own, smaller fingers between hers. “I wanted to be here,” said Alanna. “I’d sleep on rocks.”


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Kel's a bit overwhelmed. (Chapter by me.)

  
Kel closed her eyes, breathing deep in an attempt to steady herself. Her hands, and Alanna's, clasped together – shaking, though she couldn't tell which of them was.

“I'm so glad you came.” She opened her eyes, looking down at Alanna, and some of the tension of the last few weeks melted out from inside her skin.

“Dear girl,” Alanna said, wrapping her arms around Kel. It was absurd and ridiculous and shouldn't have worked, but Kel leaned into the smaller woman's embrace just the same.

“Only, there's still raiders out there, and work to do. I didn't want it to be like this...”

Alanna reached up, brushing calloused fingers over Kel's cheek. “Like what?”

Kel felt herself blushing, which must have only added to her uncivilized appearance. It seemed silly, when she thought of actually saying it, but... “Everything's a mess. I wanted to invite you here when there would be something worth coming _for._ When I'd have time...” She bit her lip, hopeful, in spite of herself.


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Alanna has a rather simple philosophy, when it comes down to it. (Chapter by Kit.)

  
_“When I have time...”_

“There rarely is, you know. “ Alanna shifted her hand, cupping rather stroking Kel’s cheek. There had been rain, the first time. And mud. And greyness. She hated being a loss for words—struggling to tell her that she didn’t care about time and surrounds and yet loved her because Kel _did_, and as Kel turned her head to kiss Alanna’s palm, all thoughts flared and died.

“There never is time, really.” Her voice was hoarse.

“More time than _this_.” Kel’s lips were still at the edge of Alanna’s and as she spoke, and the smaller woman trembled a little, bringing up her other hand to catch tears still darkening Kel’s.

“No, dear girl. _Other_ times, maybe.”

“Other times,” Kel echoed.

“Yes. But right now...go do your duty and whatnot. I’ll send you off heroically and then be at your back.

And Alanna moved both her hands, curled them into the taller woman’s hair, and pulled Kel down to kiss her.


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Kel does her duty – not patiently, necessarily, but she does it. (Chapter by me.)

  
_Duty and whatnot._

Kel went out into the sand, to her men. More bandits caught – Goddess, but she hoped this was the last of them – meant more soldiers to put on guard duty. Messengers to send to General Wyldon. Reports to write, shelter to organize, food to distribute. All done with clerks following in her wake; one sergeant or another at her side. The business of being a knight commander.

Through it all, Kel felt a curious lightness; a buzzing at the back of her mind, the direct result of kisses she couldn't stop remembering.

At last there came a moment when Kel mentally turned to the next task at hand, and realized there wasn't one. Her day's work was done, and Alanna was waiting.

She turned to the sergeant on duty for the night, passing him the emergency horn carried by the encampment's commander on duty. “Unless the world is ending,” she said, gravely, “do _not_ bother me.”

She strode toward her tent.


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Worry, then gladness. (Chapter by me.)

The tent was empty when Kel reached it, and for a moment she thought she had imagined the whole thing. Then the flap was pushed open again, evening sun slanting across the space to shine on all the detrius of the past few hectic weeks. Her cot, against the far side of the tent, now had two pillows.

She turned around, and there was Alanna in the doorway, again. “We did this already,” Kel heard herself say.

“Yes.”

“So let's skip past it?”

That earned her a grin, and then Alanna was in her arms, and kissing her again.


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A sense of ease. (Chapter by Kit.)

  
They were naked save Alanna’s thigh and ankle knives. It was evening. The world was yet to end.

Kel stroked the older woman’s face. “You make a terrible desk knight,” she said.

“Good! I told Gary it was important. Wrote to him, that is. I was getting pretty good at that. “

Kel flushed faintly. “Oh, you think?”

“_Now_ I do.” Laughter between them, Alanna’s arms twining more surely about her, arching up to kiss and laughing all the more at the sounds of protests her joints made, loud pops in the still air of the tent. “Good at letters. _Terribly_ human in person.”

Kel kissed her again, urgent. “I approve of this,” she said, low.


	8. Chapter 8

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Kel considers approval. And...er...other things. (Chapter by Kit.)

  
“You approve of me?” Alanna’s mouth against the skin of her throat. Her collarbone. A slow flick of her tongue between Kel’s breasts. “I’m not sure what to make of that.”

There was something in this that made Kel feel every inch her own size—long and broad and solid. But this was not a hulking thing, nor a clumsy one. She felt every last muscle and stretch of skin and throb of blood and every bit of herself, and she _revelled_ in it, because that was more for the Lioness to touch.

“You should—keep going. That’s what.”


	9. Chapter 9

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Two women remember winter. (Final chapter, by Kit.)

  
“I was never sure if last Winter was just—“

“—my taking refuge from the cold?”

“”Well, yes. In a manner of speaking.”

“And it was, in a manner of speaking. The world was cold. And George, well...”

“Alanna?”

“Yes, love?”

“I think it’s wonderful you can say his name now.”

Words in the dark, Alanna’s head on Kel’s shoulder. Both pairs of eyes open. Unseeing and unseen. “_Is_ it, Kel?” Alanna forced the words with half a laugh. “Dead two years, and I get his name back. _That’s_ something.”

“Yes.” Warm. Sad. Real. “Yes, it is.”

“That was you, you know. I didn’t mean to use you like that, but—“

“Alanna.

“Keladry?”

“I let you.”


End file.
